


I Can See It

by dareloth



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Kink Meme, Romance, Terminal Illnesses, Tragedy, Wanderlust
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-13
Updated: 2014-06-13
Packaged: 2018-02-04 12:31:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,296
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1779199
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dareloth/pseuds/dareloth
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Come away with me," she had begged. And he decided he really had no choice at all.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Can See It

i.  _berlin_  
  
He was still not entirely sure of what they were doing or where they were going. It was unusual for him to be out of control, but she had so desperately asked him to go with her and had pressed a ticket into his hand.  
  
“Ariadne, what is going on?” he asked, gripping her hand within his own. She rolled her shoulders back, ignored the question, and gestured to the buildings before them. Arthur released her after a moment, dropping his hands into his leather coat and squinted against the sunset, pressing his lips together into a thin line.  
  
“I always wanted to go to Berghain,” Ariadne replied, as though it were the most simple answer in the world. Berghain, a nightclub with techno beats and too many tourists and too many dangers. But he obliged, as he always would, hand venturing to the small of her back as they ambled off together.  
  
(  _what a hell of a place_  )  
  
They danced well into the morning to the thrumming, pounding music. And though he supposed there was nothing official between them, he was compelled to fuck her against the brick when she begged him to.  
  
ii.  _warsaw_  
  
“I always wanted to see a Botticelli up close,” she breathed.   
  
 _The Virgin and Child_  was magnificent, for all of the small imperfections due to age. It was a nippy fall afternoon, and the two of them had taken cover in the National Museum. His windbreaker hung around her shoulders, trying to coax her into warmth. Despite her red cardigan and warm scarf, tremors wracked her body.  
  
“It is nice,” he relented. He set an arm around her shoulders and pulled her closer, fixing her windswept curls from their places. They stood before the vast painting for a long while, and he allowed it. His lips pressed against the side of her head in a fleeting gesture, out of impulse and the Polish air.  
  
It was not odd, standing there in silence and regarding the art before them. Arthur had never been one to seek museums, as most men were not, but he found watching Ariadne’s varying expressions of approval.  
  
(  _beautiful_  )  
  
He still did not know why he was being pulled along on her whirlwind tour of the continent, but he supposed it did not matter. Ariadne rested her head against his shoulder as they looked over a Rembrandt, content to let the world pass by for a little while.  
  
iii.  _moscow_  
  
“She’s asleep,” he replied. It had been four weeks since they had left Paris on a whim. Her whim, really. “She hasn’t been feeling well,” Arthur added as an afterthought. Since Warsaw, the life had been sapped from her in what he assumed to be some sort of flu. The weather in Russia had turned mutinous, the chill trying to worm its way into their hotel room.  
  
“How is she?” Yusuf asked. His voice crackled across the airwaves, and Arthur ambled the room to find better signal. Ariadne did not stir from their bed, and he watched the gentle rise and fall of her chest. “Arthur? How has she been doing?” he repeated, an edge to his voice.  
  
“Fine,” Arthur began. He paused. How is she? What a loaded question. He dropped into the over-stuffed armchair near the bed. “What... what do you mean, though?” Arthur asked after a long silence between them, running his tongue over his lips. There was something that he did not like about Yusuf’s tone. Worry.  
  
 _Intense worry.  
_  
“Well... you two left very fast, my friend. It was not long after her appointment, and... with things going the way they are, I supposed you two would be back sooner,” he replied in even tones. “He said nine weeks before hospice care, and I suppose it has only been a month, but...”  
  
Arthur heard everything with water in his ears for a long moment, knuckles white. “I don’t know if we’ll be back any time soon,” he responded mechanically. Some small talk followed, their plans in Moscow and their want to go back to Rome.  
  
He did not say anything of his conversation with Yusuf to her. They wandered the Square of Europe for some time that night when she roused, his peacoat swallowing her whole as they watched the light show illuminate the sky.  
  
“I love you, you know. For coming around with me. Coming everywhere,” Ariadne murmured. Her voice was tired, weary, but he did not press the issue. His hand tightened around her shoulders as her head dropped against his arm. “We don’t have to go to Rome. I don’t want to keep you from your work.”  
  
“Ariadne, I just love you,” he replied after a comfortable silence. Plans were made for Italy, and he still did not tell her what he knew. He supposed it did not matter. Arthur did not want to entice argument to push her away. Arthur drew her close that evening and fucked her, though it was not the same as the frantic German encounter. It was slow as molasses and stretched late into the evening. And as they lay there, and as her breathing slowed down with their legs twined, he wept freely and openly into her hair as she slept.  
  
iv.  _paris_  
  
They had not made it to Italy.  
  
She had taken a turn, tremors wracking her body with terrifying frequency. Her skin had took on an ugly yellow hue. “It was the somnacin,” Ariadne explained. “I guess my liver didn’t like it.” And he blamed himself and Cobb and Yusuf and everyone that had allowed her to go under.  
  
It was not unheard of. Working with sedatives was a dangerous thing, he knew. But Arthur had not supposed he would lose her to acute liver failure at the age of twenty-four, her eyes all sunken and her lips chapped.  
  
The days were passed looking through photographs from Moscow, Poland, and Berlin. They went by quietly and without much finesse, but he didn’t mind. If the attending was not paying attention, he would slide into bed beside her and bury his face into her hair, trying to memorize her.  
  
“There was a whole world I saw with you,” Ariadne murmured one day, in a fevered delirium. “I saw everything. And I saw you, too. You... I broke your progress,” she whispered. Arthur shushed her and pressed ice against her forehead, fingertips dragging along her arm in a soothing manner.  
  
A week passed with her in constant fever and tremors, drenched in sweat. It was on a Thursday when her fever spiked to one hundred and seven degrees  
  
(  _scrambled eggs_ )  
  
that he knew. He knew. It was selfish, perhaps, but Arthur did not call Yusuf or Eames or anyone who may have wanted to see her. Instead, he held her hand and stroked hair, murmuring that he loved her until she passed through his fingertips.  
  
v.  _italy_  
  
“She always wanted to see Michaelangelo up close,” he explained. Arthur ambled along with Yusuf in comfortable silence, glancing around the Sistine Chapel with interest. It was grandiose, something that he would build in his own dreams.   
  
Yusuf was trying to touch things he was not supposed to. The guards watched Yusuf closely as Arthur picked rubble from the ground and ventured to take a small chip from the fresco, tucking it into his pocket with nonchalance that was practiced.  
  
It was therapeutic, he supposed, completing their journey there and back again. Arthur kept the little fragments in his pocket until they returned to the hotel, dropping them with the pamphlets from Berlin and Moscow, with the trinkets she had purchased. And he closed it, itching to find more things she would have liked. Itching to see the world.  
  
“Yusuf, what do you say to Vienna?”


End file.
